


Star of the Sea

by deborah_judge



Category: due South
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-30
Updated: 2011-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-15 06:14:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stella tells the story of her marriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Star of the Sea

When she was a girl, Stella used to love to dance on the shores of Lake Michigan. In the winter nightfall came early and by the time she made her way home from school the stars were already out. It was easy enough to make excuses to linger where the city met the water, where the stars reflected in the ice where it covered the waves. (She could always tell her parents she was at the library.) Sometimes Ray would meet her there, and he would twirl her around and bury his face in her hair. He was only thirteen then, but he was her knight, her prince, and she already knew she would love him forever.

Her parents hated Ray, of course. They said he had no ambition. But that was ridiculous. Of course he had ambition. He wanted to stop crime and fight evil and make Chicago a better place, just like she did. What he didn't have was money. His family was from the wrong side of town. She'd be poor if she married him, or at least not rich like her parents were. Already at twelve she knew she didn't care.

She made love to him for the first time at age fifteen. Her parents were out of town, it was January and they had gone someplace warm and but she had told them she couldn't go, she had work to do for school, she was going to be a lawyer. It wasn't false, as far as it went, but as soon as she heard the door lock behind her parents and their car start in the driveway that winter afternoon she was on the phone to Ray, ordering him to get over here, now, this minute. It took rather more than a minute for him to make up some story for his parents and call in sick to his paper route, and then there were the three busses he needed to take to get up to the Gold Coast from Southside, but he was there soon enough. He brought flowers. She thought she should be afraid, this was all big and scary, but she had known him for three years and he had saved her life and besides it was Ray. So she just took the flowers and let him kiss her. She could feel him shaking, but she knew he would want to feel in control, so she let him lead her and undress her and lie her down in her bed. She paused him for a moment to get the condoms she had prepared. (She had bought them from a vending machine in a public bathroom months ago.) He grumbled a little, but not too much. She had practiced with a banana and, although Ray's naked body and fierce smile were endlessly distracting, she managed to work the condom onto his cock passably enough before she lay back and let him press himself inside her. It hurt, and it didn't last very long, and it made a terrible mess. It felt wonderful, though. It felt almost as good just to lie beside him and feel him sweaty and breathless and to run her hands through his hair until it stood upright. He looked so vulnerable in that moment, so fragile. "We can do this again," she said. "As often as you want. We'll find a way."

They did find ways, for the next few months, behind trees and under bridges. For her sixteenth birthday Stella got a car, which made everything much easier. She would pick up Ray from school and drive him to the edge of the water and they would make love in the back seat. She made sure her parents never found out. They never found out while Stella was in college, either, not even after she and Ray moved in together. She kept a pricey dorm room at Northwestern where she would leave some of her books and entertain her parents when they wished to be shown what they imagined to be her life. By this time Ray was already a cadet, and although he wasn't making much he had his own place. One room, with a mattress on the floor. It was enough. Stella would practice her argumentative papers with Ray. Sometimes he'd argue back. Sometimes he'd just look at her and she would see such love in his face that she would believe she could do anything. So she did. She graduated top in her class and was offered admission to a rather exclusive set of law schools.

The night she told her parents of her choice she asked Ray to come with her and wait in the car. Then she broke the news. She was not going to Harvard, or to Stanford. She was going to University of Illinois at Chicago, which was local, and had a good program for people who wanted to work for the state, because that's what she wanted to do. To make a difference, not to make money. She watched their faces close as she told them, and in that moment she felt free, as free as she always had with Ray. "And one other thing," she said. "I'm getting married."

They knew who it was before she told them. They may not have known that she and Ray were living together, or had been lovers since childhood, but they knew she loved him. How could they not? And they didn't approve. They wouldn't support her, they said. "Fine," she said. She was ready for this. "I don't want anything of yours." She took all the money out of her wallet and put it on the table. Then she took off her earrings and necklace, both birthday presents from her parents. Then her clothes. She ran outside naked into Ray's car.

He stared at her. "Drive," she said.

"What.."

"Just drive," she said. She let him wrap her in his sweatshirt. He didn't understand what she had done but she knew he was proud of her. He always was. "I told them we're getting married," she said. It was a question. The light in his eyes told her all the answer she needed to know.

They got married at City Hall the next day. She was wearing that same sweatshirt and a pair of his old sweatpants that she had to roll up to keep them from dragging on the ground. The afternoon of her wedding she mailed back to her parents all her things from the dorm room, and went to speak to the student affairs office about renegotiating her financial aid.

Later in life, this all felt like ancient history. She did eventually reconcile with her parents, although they never liked Ray particularly. And she was glad of her choice, for so many years. He was the husband she needed. He made her crazy, and there was never enough money, just like her parents had always predicted, but the sex was great and she always knew he would love her. As long as they were married, whenever she had to give a challenging summation, whenever the judge was hostile and the case was difficult and she had to speak with all the confidence she had, all she needed to do was imagine Ray watching her, loving her, as certain of her as if she were truly his star. That never changed, really. Even when things ended between them, even when they both knew it had to end, she still took strength from the way he looked at her, the way he smiled at her. Even once he was no longer her husband he was the one who had loved her first, who had watched her dance by the frozen coast and who had married her when she didn't even have any clothes.

She had said that she did not want children, but the truth was that she couldn't have them. Oh, her body probably could, but she didn't know what she would do with them after they were born. She was a good lawyer. She had always known she would be. Ray was a cop. He wasn't going to quit what he was doing to raise her kids, not like her male colleagues' wives would. And she couldn't do it herself. She loved him madly, but there wasn't enough left over. Not enough for children.

She still went out to the lake, sometimes, when it was cold and ice lay like silver over the beach. Lake Michigan stretched northwards, and on the far distant side the waters that touched her city reached as far away as Canada. She knew Ray was there, with his Mountie, off on adventures. Perhaps she would marry a man that she could love with her feet more firmly planted on the earth. But Ray would be out there, always in the north, and she would think of him as she looked out on the waters at the stars.


End file.
